Posts Tagged With: War and Peace

Things Faster Than Plate Tectonics

Posted on September 3, 2024 by pauldelancey

Watch Earth’s plates separate.

And they are:

1) The wait in an urgent care’s waiting room on a Tuesday morning after Labor Day. 2,700 people were there 15 minutes after opening. (All the people who would have gone on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday stampeded the facility today.)

2) Road repair. (The jury’s out on this one, but I suspect plate tectonics is a little slower.)

3) Watching a foreign move because your good looking date wanted to.

4) The line at the DMV.

5) Red lights. (There’s always a direction of traffic that gets massively favored and one that gets screwed.)

6) Any line when you have a bad back.

7) Reading the last 200 pages of War and Peace. (Again, another close call.)

8) Parties where you are the only introvert, don’t know anyone, and have no ride home.

9) And there are no snacks to eat and no animals to pet.

10) Recovering from Covid.

11) Watching a pot of water and waiting for it to boil.

12) Games of Risk(tm), Uno(tm), and Monopoly(tm).

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

 

Categories: observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Great Things to Think About, But Not Do – Part Two

Posted on August 14, 2024 by pauldelancey

 

Sure, lots of things can be good for you, when you do them. Vaucuuming and kale crunching come to mind. They’re might be some nutritional benefits to eating them but can you eat them.  And don’t forget vacuuming kale is the only way vacuum will always fill your world with true serenity.

We can, with some effort, think of benefits accruing from cleaning house and eating healthy.

“Just don’t overdo things by actually doing them.”

– Carl La Fong, life coach

LIST OF THINGS TO THINK ABOUT , BUT NOT DO.

3) Cleaning House – Conventional wisdom holds that an ordered house indicates an ordered mind. Which, of course, makes you happy. But is this really true?

Sure cleaning your house provides us with a marginal, if at all perceptible, boost to our sense of well being. But if something horrible happens or we fall prey to a fit of depression by eating a seemingly endless bowl of naked romaine lettuce, what can we do to feel better, to restore our joie de vivre? Sure cleaning restores order and meaning to our universe. But we can’t clean an already immaculate home. With no activity at hand to rejeuventate our spirits we plunge into the depths of everlasting despair. We might even find ourselves reading War and Peace in the original Russian.

Can such cleaning make us healthier in the long run? Sure. But in the short run we become exhausted and feel sad about our weak body. We head home, flop face down onto our bed, and spiral ever downward into a bottomless well of depression.

4) Healthy Eating – Doctors and dieticians everywhere will tell you that you will live longer, ceteris paribus, everything else remaining equal. But not everything is equal, is it? Is a man drinking a kale smoothie likely to be happy? No, his will to live will slowly, but surely, ebb away until he quivers continually in a dark closet. His physical health faces existential deterioration. If you could look at his cell phone, you’ll find that he has the suicide hotline on speed dial.

And what of Farine du Blé gazing forlornly at her rabbit-food salad? What happens when she looks at the happy, laughing couple eating filet mignon and bacon-wrapped shrimp? Her heart will shrink to the size of a mustard seed. She will hate the mignon-munching couple. She’ll despise you. Her eyes will shoot daggers at me. She’ll loath every last one of us. Farine will retire to her shuttered, drape-closed home and never come out again. It won’t matter, if rabbit-food salads lenghter her life span or not, every day forcing down salady things will transform her pitiful existence into soul-squashing gloom.

Better yet, eat something you love, something you crave. Like cheeseburgers, tacos, and strawberry milkshakes. Sure, these foods aren’t technically good for you. But look at the unparalleled joy you’ll reap getting them into your tummy. You’ll gain the courage of a lion, the motivation of a hummingbird, and the happiness of a woman winning the lottery.

Oh, and if you do hanker for something healthy such as spinach be sure to dine on Chicken Florentine. Sure, it features spinach, but it also comes with chicken breasts and creamy sauces. You won’t feel as if you’re munching on heatlhy food. Indeed, with any luck at all, the unhealthy ingredients will overpower the spinach to the extendt that your outlook on life will explode with happiness. You’ll want to live. And you will. What more can you want?

“Remember, it’s healthier to think than to do.”

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Great Things to Think About, health, observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Giving “War and Peace” to Viruses and Bacteria

Posted on May 27, 2024 by pauldelancey

I hate viruses and bacteria. They gave me Covid. This is in clear contravention of the tacit treaty that I don’t attack them and they don’t attack me.

Yet here we are, I’ve been as a sick as a dog and am taking forever to get better.

The gloves are off. I shall be using my brain to get back at them.

I shall shrink billions and billions of copies of War and Peace to molecular size. I shall put these tiny books into pills, just like we do with antibiotics.

Covid19s are voracious readers, they’ve just never given the chance to ready anything. (Clearly, this is a great, untapped market for the major publishing houses.)

Anyway, I call tell you that War and Peace is tremendously hard to plow all the way through,

Imagine then, how hard it would be and how long it take for the Corona19 virus to read that lengthy novel. Prima facie evidence suggests our brain is much bigger than that of the evil virus. Take this simple test: Look in a mirror. You can see your head at first glance. Assume your brain is surrounded by an inch of skull. Logic then dictates your brain must be inches long in all directions. Consider the virus. You can’t see it with the unaided eye. You can’t even see it with that Mr. Professor microscope you gave your five-year old for Christmas. No, you need a super-duper microscope used by the biggest-research facilities.

So, the virus must be incredibly tiny. Only part of the virus is reserved for its brain. Then take away the virus’ skull from that and you’re left with a really itsy, bitsy, teeny, weeny virus brain. A brain that small must make reading War and Peace a frightfully slow slog for Joe Virus.

Now here’s the genius of my plan. No virus, or bacterium for that matter, is going to live long enough to finish War and Peace. Indeed, it will be so busy trying to read the great Russian novel, that it won’t find anybody to infect in its short lifetime. Infections will drop to zero. Viruses already in a human host will be too engrossed to further attack any more human cells. The human host will stage a rapid recovery.

Thus, by this literary assault, Covid19 will disappear overnight. We just need to print and miniaturize billions, if not trillions of copies of War and Peace. They need not be first editions, any printing will do.

I see a Nobel Prize in my future.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Nobel Prize | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary – Today’s Word: Bloval

Posted on June 23, 2023 by pauldelancey

We’ve all done pointless, but difficult things. Perhaps it was completely filling in the “o”s i  War and Peace. Perhaps it was balancing an egg. Perhaps it was balancing an egg on its pointy end. The skill and determination needed to bring these efforts to a success are truly worthy of our praise, if only they weren’t so useless.

But we don’t have a word to describe these utterly unimportant achievements.

It’s high time to correct this oversight.

TODAY’S AWESOME WORD

bloval

Awesome entry #15

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Paul's Awesome Dictionay | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bully Beef Casserole

Posted on October 6, 2018 by pauldelancey

Papua New Guinean Entree

BULLY BEEF CASSEROLE

INGREDIENTS

¾ cup rice
¼ cup peas (optional)
1 12-ounce can corned beef
3 Roma tomatoes
1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk

SPECIAL UTENSIL

8″ x 8″ casserole dish

Serves 4. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 360 degrees. Cook rice and peas according to instructions on package. While rice cooks, crumble the corned beef. Cut the tomatoes into slices ¼”-to- ½” thick. Line the casserole dish with ½ of the rice. Use ½ of the crumbled corned beef to make a layer above the rice. Use ½ of the tomato slices to make a layer above the corned beef. Repeat this sequence of layers with the remaining rice, corned beef, and tomato slices. Pour coconut milk over casserole. Sprinkle peas over casserole. Bake at 360 degrees for 25 minutes or until coconut milk bubbles.

TIDBITS

1) This entree takes 50 minutes to make. What else could you do with that time besides serving your loved ones a tasty meal? Here are some suggestions.

2) Meditate: Cross your legs and assume a full-lotus position. Meditating clears your mind, soothes your soul, and lowers your blood pressure. Allow 30 of the 50 minutes to cussing as your body gets into and out of difficult position.

2) Read a good book. If it’s a long one such as War and Peace, your mind will be much improved. However, as the novel is so much longer than 50 minutes, you’ll have to give up many 50-minute meals in a row. You will starve.

3) Which is why you’ll have to order pizza after pizza while reading War and Peace. Countries with the highest number of War and Peace copies eat the most pizza.

4) Foment revolution. Of course, no real fomenting can be done in just 50 minutes, which is why America and most countries never, or at most rarely, suffer civil war.

5) Governments do, however, fear dishes that take longer to make. Our leaders go to great lengths to suppress cookbooks with entrees requiring a week of preparation. Now you know.

Chef Paul

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bully Beef Casserole

Posted on October 6, 2018 by pauldelancey

Papua New Guinean Entree

BULLY BEEF CASSEROLE

INGREDIENTS

¾ cup rice
¼ cup peas (optional)
1 12-ounce can corned beef
3 Roma tomatoes
1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk

SPECIAL UTENSIL

8″ x 8″ casserole dish

Serves 4. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 360 degrees. Cook rice and peas according to instructions on package. While rice cooks, crumble the corned beef. Cut the tomatoes into slices ¼”-to- ½” thick. Line the casserole dish with ½ of the rice. Use ½ of the crumbled corned beef to make a layer above the rice. Use ½ of the tomato slices to make a layer above the corned beef. Repeat this sequence of layers with the remaining rice, corned beef, and tomato slices. Pour coconut milk over casserole. Sprinkle peas over casserole. Bake at 360 degrees for 25 minutes or until coconut milk bubbles.

TIDBITS

1) This entree takes 50 minutes to make. What else could you do with that time besides serving your loved ones a tasty meal? Here are some suggestions.

2) Meditate: Cross your legs and assume a full-lotus position. Meditating clears your mind, soothes your soul, and lowers your blood pressure. Allow 30 of the 50 minutes to cussing as your body gets into and out of difficult position.

2) Read a good book. If it’s a long one such as War and Peace, your mind will be much improved. However, as the novel is so much longer than 50 minutes, you’ll have to give up many 50-minute meals in a row. You will starve.

3) Which is why you’ll have to order pizza after pizza while reading War and Peace. Countries with the highest number of War and Peace copies eat the most pizza.

4) Foment revolution. Of course, no real fomenting can be done in just 50 minutes, which is why America and most countries never, or at most rarely, suffer civil war.

5) Governments do, however, fear dishes that take longer to make. Our leaders go to great lengths to suppress cookbooks with entrees requiring a week of preparation. Now you know.

Chef Paul

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Travel Grouch’s Guide To Not Sucky Vacationing

Posted on December 1, 2015 by pauldelancey

Dear Travel Grouch,SelfieGrandCanyon2-

Vacationing is getting less and less pleasant every year. While I used to be able to peacefully admire the scenery, now I can’t even get to the scenic point because of hordes of people taking one selfie after another. They don’t even look at scenery until they get home and look at it on their iPad thingy. And They never leave. Never. What can I do? I want to see nature. Please help me with this. Other tips will be appreciated. Thank you.

– Amos Keeto

Dear Mr. Keeto,

I feel your pain. Why just last summer I had to . . . Whoops, way too public a forum. Deep breath. Ahh. I’m okay now. Here, dear friend, are some helpful hints.

1) Contact Paul’s Flying Squirrel Squadron before going on vacation. They will visit you on your trip and say many kind, encouraging words to you. If asked, they will also serenade you at night. Listen carefully, they have tiny voices. They will even have “chats” with the offending tourists. Best to stay inside until the “chats” are over.

2) Do you have a sonic obliterator? If not, you really should get one. They get rid of the selfie takers quite nicely. You’ll be able to walk up to the scenic outlook. You’ll be happy. You might even find yourselves smiling and isn’t that what vacations are all about?

3) Does the offensive line of a top-ten football team owe you a favor? If so, get it to run a flying wedge in front of you all the way to the railing. Sure, this will knock the selfie takers into the canyon far below, but their screams will be heard only for a moment.

4) The overriding virtue of tips 3) and 4) is that the bodies will be impossible to find or nearly so.

5) Don’t be so busy offing selfie takers that you forget to throw away your litter. No one likes a scofflaw.

6) For some reason, people think that if you can’t understand their language, you can’t hear them. It’s okay to place a glass dome over them and suck out all the air with a giant pump until they stop talking. Just make sure you do this when others aren’t looking.

7) It’s not okay, however, to assume that only foreigners talk so loud that they need the glass dome treat. Your fellow countrymen often shout when they travel abroad. And let me tell you, people of every nation have glass domes and giant pumps.

8) Employees in American visitor centers and toll booths do not carry sonic obliterators. This means drivers can safely engage them in conversations that make a reading of War and Peace go by quickly. I blame budget cutbacks for this. You’ll have to buy your own sonic obliterator. I cannot stress enough the need for proper planning.

Happy traveling.

– Paul R, De Lancey, The Travel Grouch

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ethiopian Beef Stew (Siga Wat)

Posted on October 17, 2015 by pauldelancey

Ethiopian Entree

SIGA WAT
(beef stew)

INGREDIENTSSigaWat-

1½ pounds, chuck or other cut of beef
4 garlic cloves
2 onions
3 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
1½ cups water
2 tablespoons Berbere spice mix
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons tomato paste
4 eggs
2 Roma tomatoes

PREPARATION

Cut chuck into 1″ cubes. Dice garlic and onion. Add onion garlic, and ghee to large pot. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low. Add chuck cubes, water, Berbere spice mix, ginger, paprika, salt, and tomato paste. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes or until meat is tender. Stir occasionally.

While beef and spices simmer, boil 4 eggs. Remove eggs and let them cool. Peel eggs and cut egg one into 4 slices. Cut tomatoes into 6 slices each. Top stew with egg and tomato. This dish goes on injera (See recipe.) or on pita bread.

TIDBITS

1) Ghee is clarified butter.

2) Ghee makers make ghee. They have been making ghee for centuries. Not the same people, of course, successive generations take over.

3) Ghee makers make it on their knee, in a tree, for a fee, not for free oh gee, you see, for me, for we, for a bee, mais oui. hee, hee. The clarified butter industry is an ebullient one.

4) Indeed, people are so happy when making ghee, they sing with glee. And they form formidable glee clubs, and enter competitions. Every year an Ethiopian glee club wins the International Glee Competition, held in Östersund, Sweden.

5) Swedish ghee makers, of course, are avid readers of Dr. Seuss. They’ve also all devoured War and Peace by Tolstoy. Go figure.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Atty’s Attic Interviews Me!

Posted on October 1, 2013 by pauldelancey

Atty'sAttic

Paul DeLancey goes above and beyond on this interview. You’re gonna love this guy!

While the Earl of Sandwich earns a spot in any culinary hall of fame, he was indeed a flawed man: opinionated, drunken, corrupt, incompetent, a sex fiend, a Satan worshiper, and all that.

And with that intro welcome Paul to my attic.

Who are you and where did you come from?

I’m Paul R. De Lancey. I was born in Los Angeles. I mostly grew up in Arcadia, California. I lived a year in Australia and three years in the Netherlands. I enjoy humorous novels, science fiction, history, and cookbooks. I also enjoy long walks to the fridge for orange juice.

Obviously you’re a writer, what is the name of your book and the general plot?

The title is “Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World.” It’s a cookbook, so there isn’t any plot, although I do add humorous tidbits at the end of each recipe about the recipe and its ingredients.

Where did you come up with the idea?

I’ve always liked to cook. I had been posting my meals on Facebook and on my blog. People showed interest and even suggested I write a cookbook. So I did.

Which of your characters do you like the most and why?

Again, there are no characters in a cookbook, but I like Mexican food the best.

Too funny, thank you for answering anyway!

Which one do you hate the most and why?

I hate lutefisk. So did the Vikings. The idea of staying put in Scandinavia with its horrible lutefisk made the Vikings so ornery that they invaded and rampaged over Europe for centuries.

You’re stranded on an island and you are granted three things;

The first thing you’re granted is an iPod with only one song loaded, what is it?

The theme song from Barney to motivate me in finding a way off the island.

The second item is a book with the last chapter missing, what is it and who wrote it?

War and Peace by Tolstoy. I Loved it except for the mind-numbingly boring last chapter. I want to thank who ever tore out that last chapter.

And the third thing you’re granted on this island is a lunchbox with a sandwich and a full thermos, yummy, what kind of sandwich and drink would you appreciate?

Philly cheese steak and root beer.

What is the biggest mistake you have made in your life? Not writing or publishing mistake – any mistake. Even if it happened in 3rd grade, I wanna know about it.

Stupidly changing an answer on a national math test in high school at the last second. If I had left it alone I would have gotten national recognition.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

Not much.

You’re still stranded on that island and two people show up, the character you love the most, and the one you hate the most, and they both know what you said about them. What do you do?

Get them to look for a contact lens in the sand while I sip on the root beer I got earlier in this questionnaire.  Oh, and thank you for the root beer.

Flash round favorites:

Color

Blue

Sound

In my hearing range

Season

Spring. I so wanted to say allspice.

Animal

Cat

Smell

Food cooking

Food

Tacos

Place to visit

Fiji

Place to live

Wherever my family is

Movie

It’s a Gift by W.C. Fields

Alien

Mexican, French, Swedish

Great answer!

Number

5

Writing spot

Fiji

Texture

Smooth

Planet

Earth

And last of all, favorite memory?

Births of my children

Anything else you would like to add?

Vote Bacon & Chocolate in 2016.

And on that note, Paul didn’t have to but he shared a fantastic recipe for us so I do expect you all to try it. Thank you so much, Paul for going above and beyond!

 

American Entrée

 SLOW FRENCH DIP SANDWICHES

french

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 pounds beef loin top sirloin
1 1/2 pounds beef sirloin tip
1 10.5 ounce can condensed French onion soup
1 cup beef stock or broth
1/2 cup water
8 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon thyme
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon beef base or 1 beef bouillon cube
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
10 slices provolone cheese or about 10 ounces
5 French rolls

SPECIALTY ITEM

3 quart, or larger, slow cooker.

PREPARATION

Cut the top sirloin and the sirloin tip enough so that it will fit inside your slow cooker and be covered with the liquid you will add later. Dice garlic cloves.

In fact, here comes the liquid now. Pour French onion soup, beef stock, and water into slow cooker. And now for addition. Add peppercorns, bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, garlic, beef base, sea salt, meat spice, and pepper. And wait.

And wait. Oh and the turn the cooker on low for 6-to-8 hours. (Egads, you’ll have time to collect all receipts that you’ve stashed all around the house in preparation for tax time. Then you forgot where you put them. Now you have time to find them. Go! Go! Look for those receipts. I’m with you on this one.)

It really pays to get an early start on this one, especially if you are using your cooker for the first time. Many but not all slow cookers will get the job done on low in 6-to-8 hours. (My crock pot however needs to be set on high to cook anything in less time than it takes a city to repair a major street.)

Use spoon with holes in it to remove beef from cooker to serving bowl. Open French rolls. Put a slice of provolone cheese on each half. Use spoon with holes in it to put a generous portion of beef on the roll. Spoon juice remaining in cooker onto open sandwich. Close sandwich. Spoon more juice onto closed French roll. Eat. Dream of Heaven.

TIDBITS

1) The sandwich was invented in 1762 when the Earl of Sandwich was too busy to leave the gambling table to eat. Instead, he had a waiter bring him roast beef between two pieces of bread.

2) See, gambling has been good for society.

3) Indeed, many people believe professional sports came into being because gamblers hired players to be on the team they were backing with their bets.

4) The Earl asked for slices of bread to keep the grease from the roast beef from marking the playing cards.

5) While the Earl earns a spot in any culinary hall of fame, he was indeed a flawed man: opinionated, drunken, corrupt, incompetent, a sex fiend, a Satan worshiper, and all that.

6) There is no word, however, if he over spiced.

7) But he did weaken the Royal Navy to such an extent that the French Fleet beat it in 1781, ensuring America’s victory in the American Revolution.

8) A lot to think about when you bite into your next sandwich.

website: www.lordsoffun.com

blog: pauldelancey.com

Thank you so very much for coming to cook for us today. My attic smells wonderful!

Thank you, Atty!

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sunshine Milkshake

Posted on July 8, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

SUNSHINE MILKSHAKE

INGREDIENTSSunshineMilk-

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 bananas

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

PREPARATION

Peel the bananas. Put bananas, milk, orange juice, sugar, and vanilla extract. Use “milkshake” setting. Blend until shake is sufficiently smooth for your taste.

With the time you saved making this simple recipe over a more complicated one, you can read War and Peace.

TIDBITS

1) Seasoned fishermen put vanilla extract on their hands so fish can’t smell them. How fish hundreds of feet deep in the ocean can smell human way up there in a boat is beyond me.

2) If fish have such a good sense of smell, maybe the TSA should hire them to sniff for drugs and explosives at airports.

3) Of course, the TSA would have to provide fish bowls for their aquatic brethren or the fish would die. And stink. And then no one would want to fly, except the bad guys who would be easy to arrest as they were the only ones flying.

4) Unless, of course, the TSA people eat the fish when they die. Maybe use some lemon juice.

5) It’s an interesting legal question. May a fish working for the federal government be eaten?

6) In 1519, Montezuma invited Cortez to share a chocolate drink (Xocolatl) with him. Cortez accepted the invitation. Cortez soon afterward seized Montezuma and executed him. This is more than bad manners on the part of a guest. If Cortez had not gotten into see Montezuma, he couldn’t have decapitated the leadership of the great Aztec nation. The resulting disarray in the Aztec command gave Cortez enough of an advantage to conquer Mexico.

7) The Spanish went on to conquer Central America, much of South America, and what became the southwestern part of the United States. One can only imagine how culinary history would have been changed in the Americas if this had not have happened.

8) So think about that when you invite someone over for hot chocolate.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, food, history, humor, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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